MEDEA (1969)

We begin in ancient Greece with a centaur teaching a young man named Jason about nature, myth, and the gods. Jason is under the centaur's care because his father, the king, has been deposed by Jason's uncle Creon. When he grows up, Jason challenges the king for the throne of Corinth, and the king sends him on a journey to Colchis to bring back the Golden Fleece, at which point Creon will give him his rightful throne—if you've seen The Wizard of Oz, (or, more to the point, know your Greek myths) you may suspect how this will turn out. Colchis is a land of barbarians where the princess Medea leads the priests and people, sun worshippers, in a human sacrifice ritual during which they kill a child and spread his blood among the crops as an aid for fertility. Unlike in the Ray Harryhausen fantasy JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, Jason’s Argonauts are a rag-tag group of men on a small dilapidated barge, but Medea falls for him and helps him take the fleece. She then kills her own brother and hacks up his body in order to flee with Jason back to Corinth. Creon then decides to not keep his promise to Jason, which Jason seems fine with. An outsider who never feels accepted, and who is suspected of being a sorceress by the people of Corinth, Medea lives with Jason and bears him two children over the next few years, but when Jason makes plans to marry Creon's daughter Glauce, Medea is unmoored and plots a terrible revenge.

As he did with Oedipus, director Pier Paolo Pasolini brings a Greek myth (via Euripides) to life with stunning stylistic touches, both visual and musical, but with less success at coherence or meaning. If you don't already know the story of Medea and Jason, this film will be confusing at best and possibly a slog at worst, though it's always interesting to look at. Shot outdoors in surreal looking settings and in actual ruins in Italy, the visuals give a strong mythical, otherworldly feel to the proceedings, as does the strange background score consisting of metallic clattering, animal noises, and Japanese sounding music. Like the 1962 version of Euripides’s ELECTRA by Michael Cacoyannis, this film feels more like a series of rituals being enacted rather than a fully inhabited performance by actors, and that adds to the out-of-time feel of the film. Laurent Terzieff (the centaur) seems like he's reciting his lines from cue cards, and Giuseppe Gentile (Jason, at left) is handsome but never feels fully engaged (in fact, this is his only movie—he was an Olympic track and field athlete—so I suspect that he may have been Pasolini's crush at the time). Massimo Girotti, a well known actor with a long career, doesn't have a lot to do as the King, but he manages some gravitas in his few scenes. 

But all is forgiven: legendary opera singer Maria Callas, as Medea (pictured above right), acts enough to make up for everyone else. And this is definitely a compliment; it's not that she's overacting, but that she's acting with her face and eyes and body to convey Medea's inner states with conviction but without exaggeration, partly because she doesn't really have much dialogue. It's ironic that her famous voice is dubbed by someone else here, but her physical performance is astounding. As interesting as much of this movie is, Pasolini is not a stickler for narrative detail so I'm not sure my summary is accurate. The ending ([Spoiler!]) in which Medea kills her children and Jason's princess plays out in two different contradictory ways, and I have no idea what to make of that. The post-dubbing is frequently sloppy, adding to the almost amateurish feel of the entire production, or if not amateurish, at least slap-dash. I was put in mind of the Rocky Horror lyric, "Lost in time and lost in space, and meaning"; the time and space enigmas were positive, the meaning, not so much. [Criterion Channel]